Is Your Brain Big Enough to Drive a Hydrogen Car?

Well, this video sure paints a hopeful picture . . . I doubt you will regret the six minutes spent watching it. But this link – the first I happened to hit Googling ‘whats wrong with the hydrogen car’ – suggests what I’ve heard from a lot of folks: that hydrogen is not the answer after all:

Have you questioned anyone how much energy is needed to produce a hydrogen you’re going to pay for? You need electricity to run the equipment reforming hydrogen to the useable for FC form. And then, the hydrogen is going to be used to get back electricity to run a vehicle propulsion motor. What’s wrong with this picture? Isn’t it simpler, cheaper, more efficient and just plain makes more sense to just store initial electricity directly in a car’s battery in the first place?

Hydrogen is an extremely clever scam. When you step back and ask, “Where will the hydrogen come from?” the house of cards falls apart. You will get hydrogen from fossil fuels. The most economic way to get hydrogen is to catalyze natural gas. When you do this, you throw away 50% of the fuel value. If you were to put that hydrogen into a fuel-cell car, it would only go 50% the distance (at best) that a hybrid car would, if fueled from the natural gas directly. The oil company loves it. They get to sell twice as much per mile driven. It is also twice as much CO2 per mile driven . . .

I don’t know – though I hope to learn more this week, and report to you if I do.

YOUR BIG BRAIN

It must be big if you’re smart enough to come here every morning. Then again, I read that Einstein’s brain was 10% smaller than average. [Insert your own size-matters cleverness here.] But my point is that we are all probably a little interested in how we can keep from becoming really stupid. [Insert your own political jibe here.] Which is why you might want to receive Posit Science‘s monthly Brain Fitness News. [Click ‘join our mailing list.’]

The latest letter reveals that mice that drink apple juice seem less likely to suffer from mouse Alzheimer’s . . . that getting out in the sun in the morning makes you brighter all day . . . and that the Finns have developed a screen to help determine the likelihood of developing dementia (step number one: do you live in a country where it’s practically pitch black six months of the year?). There are links to take a Brain Speed Test or to become a brain-fitness design consultant. And a special link between your wallet and mine if you wind up buying the product.